{"id":10698,"date":"2012-10-31T05:08:07","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T20:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=10698"},"modified":"2012-10-31T05:37:16","modified_gmt":"2012-10-30T20:37:16","slug":"wash-post-a-declining-japan-loses-its-once-hopeful-champions-including-ezra-vogel-as-japan-is-eclipsed-by-an-ascendant-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=10698","title":{"rendered":"Wash Post: A declining Japan loses its once-hopeful champions (including Ezra Vogel!) — as Japan is eclipsed by an ascendant China"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hi Blog. \u00a0The Washington Post’s Chico Harlan does a very good article summarizing what it was once like for us “Bubble Era” veterans, and how views of Japan were once either Japan as the perfectible society to be emulated or as the irresistible wave of the future (as in, in addition to the pop-culture economic bellwethers listed below, Michael J. Fox’s boss in BACK TO THE FUTURE II being a Japanese). \u00a0Remember?<\/p>\n

Now, as the article indicates below, it’s all collapsed, and former boosters have now become pessimists (with even Japan championer Ezra Vogel now turning his attention to China!). \u00a0Here in Hawaii, the Chinese consumer is ascendant (look how empty most of the “Japanese Only” trolleys are nowadays in Waikiki), with the likely domination of Chinese over Japanese language on store signs fairly soon. \u00a0In this year’s remake of TOTAL RECALL, the exotic language being used in the background was no longer Japanese (a la BLADE RUNNER), but rather Chinese. \u00a0Check out the dominant kanji in this greeting card: \u00a0Mainland Chinese (with Japanese far receding).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think this trend will continue as Japan is eclipsed not only by China but even South Korea (Gangnam Style<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0last week’s episode of SOUTH PARK<\/a>\u00a0anyone? \u00a0It’s Japan with more color and better pronunciation of diphthongs…) in terms of economics, politics, and visions of the future.<\/p>\n

Ah well, Japan, you had your chance. \u00a0You blew it. \u00a0Arudou Debito<\/p>\n

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/<\/p>\n

A declining Japan loses its once-hopeful champions<\/strong>
\n By Chico Harlan. Washington Post, October 27, 2012. \u00a0Also republished in The Japan Times. \u00a0Courtesy of WDS<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/asia_pacific\/a-declining-japan-loses-its-once-hopeful-champions\/2012\/10\/27\/f2d90b2e-1cea-11e2-9cd5-b55c38388962_story.html<\/a><\/p>\n

TOKYO \u2014 Jesper Koll, an economist who\u2019s lived in Japan for 26 years, says it\u2019s not easy for him to keep faith in a country that\u2019s shrinking, aging, stuck in protracted economic gloom and losing fast ground to China as the region\u2019s dominant power.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI am the last Japan optimist,\u201d Koll said in a recent speech in Tokyo.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Indeed, the once-common species has been virtually wiped out. It was only two decades ago that Japan\u2019s boosters \u2014 mainly foreign diplomats and authors, economists and entrepreneurs \u2014 touted the tiny nation as a global model for how to attain prosperity and power.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But the group has turned gradually into non\u00adbelievers, with several of the last hold\u00adouts losing faith only recently, as Japan has failed to carry out meaningful reforms after the March 2011 triple disaster.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The mass turnabout has helped launch an alternative \u2014 and increasingly accepted \u2014 school of thought about Japan: The country is not just in a prolonged slump but also in an inescapable decline.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s frequent evidence for that in economic data, and in the country\u2019s destiny to become ever-smaller, doomed by demographics that will shrink the population from about 127 million today to 47 million in 2100, according to government data.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The current doom is a sharp reversal from several decades ago, when Japanese companies bought up Columbia Pictures and Rockefeller Center, and Americans argued whether Japan was to be feared or envied.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Like a separate but related group, known as \u201cJapan bashers,\u201d the optimists were bullish about Japan\u2019s future as an economic powerhouse. But unlike the bashers, who viewed Japan as a dangerous challenger to the United States, the optimists saw Japan as a benevolent superpower \u2014 rich but peaceful, with a diligence worth emulating.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, when Japan is discussed, it\u2019s instead for its unenviable fiscal problems \u2014 debt, rising social security costs, flagging trade with China because of an ongoing territorial dispute.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

China, not Japan, is mentioned in U.S. presidential debates and described as the next threat to American supremacy. Japan\u2019s government has announced record quarterly trade deficits while some of its iconic companies \u2014 Sony and Sharp \u2014 have announced staggering losses.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

By 2050, Japan \u201cwill be the oldest society ever known,\u201d with a median age of 52, according to the recent book \u201cMegachange,\u201d published by the Economist magazine. Even over the next decade, Japan\u2019s aging population will drag down the gross domestic product by about 1 percent every year. That will further strain Japan\u2019s economy, which in 2010 lost its status as the world\u2019s second-largest, a position now claimed by China.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you speak optimistically about Japan, nobody even believes it,\u201d Koll said. \u201cThey say, \u2018Oh, in 600 years there will be 480 Japanese people left. The Japanese are dying out and debt is piling up for future generations.\u2019 Japan is an easy whipping boy.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Now a pessimist<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Japan optimism became a mainstream movement with the 1979 publication of \u201cJapan As No. 1,\u201d an international bestseller that described the way a country the size of Montana had come to make cars as well as the Germans, watches as well as the Swiss and steel as well as the Americans \u2014 in more efficient plants. Japan\u2019s people worked hard, its government guided the economy, and its streets were clean and crime-free.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cJapan has dealt more successfully with more of the basic problems of post\u00adindustrial society than any other country,\u201d wrote author Ezra Vogel, a sociologist at Harvard.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But Vogel, who has lived for several periods in Japan, and has traveled here at least once a year since 1958, says he, too, has become a pessimist. Most Japanese still have a comfortable life, he says, but the political system is \u201can absolute mess,\u201d juggling prime ministers almost every year. The youngest generation, its expectations sapped by years of deflation, \u201cdoesn\u2019t have the excitement about doing things better.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Even the promise of lifetime employment and tight cooperation between government and corporations has backfired, leaving a bureaucracy-enforced status quo that makes it hard for established companies to reform and for smaller, more creative companies to emerge.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I did not foresee is that the slowdown would be such a challenge \u2014 that many of the things that worked so well on the way up .\u2009.\u2009. would be so difficult on the way down,\u201d Vogel said.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Vogel, still a professor emeritus at Harvard, says he has switched his focus in the past five years to China.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A disturbing trend<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

For more than a decade after Vogel\u2019s book was published, his predictions seemed prescient. Between 1980 and 1990, Japan\u2019s national wealth nearly tripled. Real estate prices in downtown Tokyo skyrocketed so high that analysts said the land under the Imperial Palace was worth more than the state of California. Japanese companies bought up American landmarks, and some policymakers feared Japan was challenging U.S. supremacy, particularly by using protectionist trade policies that blocked American products.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Vogel credited Japan\u2019s success in part to its willingness to study others. He described a nation obsessed with overseas travel: Students went to American universities, national sports coaches studied the training programs in other countries, trade ministry bureaucrats went on missions to Europe to hone policies. Japan even had programs in five foreign languages available on its national television networks.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But today, former Japan optimists see a disturbing trend. Fewer Japanese, they say, want to interact with the rest of the world, and undergraduate enrollment of Japanese students at U.S. universities has fallen more than 50 percent since 2000. The generation now entering Japan\u2019s job market is described by older workers here as risk-averse and unambitious, with security and comfort their top priorities.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThey have just given up trying to be number one\u201d said Yoichi Funabashi, former editor in chief of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper and chairman of the Rebuild Japan Initiative. \u201cPeople think you just cannot beat China, so don\u2019t even try. But that\u2019s bad, because if you don\u2019t train yourself on the international scene, you don\u2019t .\u2009.\u2009. sharpen your edge. And you become more inward-looking. There\u2019s a sense in Japan that we are unprepared to be a tough, competitive player in this global world.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Japan is famous among historians for its sudden transformations, re-engaging with the world in the mid-19th century after two centuries of isolation, later moving toward the militarism that helped launch World War II. After the mega-disaster last year, Japanese hoped for another transformation, with the reconstruction of a tsunami-battered region prompting a broader political and economic overhaul.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But Japanese increasingly feel that hasn\u2019t happened, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll. Just 39 percent now say that last year\u2019s disaster has made Japan a stronger country, compared with 58 percent in a similar survey taken right after the earthquake and tsunami. (According to the same survey, released in June, 93 percent of the Japanese public describe the current state of the economy as bad.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Preference for self-criticism<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Global sentiment has swung so far against Japan, the last few optimists now relish the chance to make a case on Japan\u2019s behalf.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Although Japan is commonly thought to be a \u201cDetroit-like zone\u201d with little chance for economic growth, former Sony chief executive Nobuyuki Idei said in an interview, the country still has a chance to prosper if it can tap into Asia\u2019s booming economies as a trade partner or investor. Tokyo-based venture capitalist Yoshito Hori said that Japan\u2019s many strengths are often overlooked, because Japanese prefer self-criticism to self-promotion.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe value of Japan is, even when we do something good, we rarely say it,\u201d Hori said.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the Chinese achieve something, they say, \u2018We have done this.\u2019 \u201d Japanese must learn to do the same, Hori said, \u201cotherwise, we will lose our position globally.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s partly why Koll, a \u00adJPMorgan Japan manager, decided this summer to give a TED talk \u2014 the common name for a series of pop-education \u00adspeeches \u2014 in which he described his reasons for being the last optimist.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Japan has the world\u2019s most competent financial regulator, Koll said, and a per capita GDP several times that of China. Real estate prices are back down to 1981 levels \u2014 \u201cwealth destruction has been tremendous,\u201d he said \u2014 but Japan has weathered this while still retaining its social cohesion and relative quality of life, with an unemployment rate of just 4.2 percent.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But Koll also admitted in his speech that being bullish on Japan is tantamount to saying Elvis is still alive.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThings have changed,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I first got here, I had conversations with people who said, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re so lucky to speak Japanese, because we\u2019ll all be working for the Japanese soon.\u2019 You know, those are the things they\u2019re saying about China now.\u201d<\/em><\/strong>
\nENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post’s Chico Harlan does a very good article summarizing what it was once like for us “Bubble Era” veterans, and how views of Japan were once either Japan as the perfectible society to be emulated or as the irresistible wave of the future (as in, in addition to the pop-culture economic bellwethers listed below, Michael J. Fox’s boss in BACK TO THE FUTURE II being a Japanese). <\/p>\n

Now, as the article indicates below, it’s all collapsed, and former boosters have now become pessimists (with even Japan championer Ezra Vogel now turning his attention to China!). Here in Hawaii, the Chinese consumer is ascendant, with the likely domination of Chinese over Japanese language on store signs fairly soon. In this year’s remake of TOTAL RECALL, the exotic language being used in the background was no longer Japanese (a la BLADE RUNNER), but rather Chinese. Check out the dominant kanji in this greeting card: Mainland Chinese (with Japanese far receding). I think this trend will continue as Japan is eclipsed not only by China but even South Korea (Gangnam Style on last week’s episode of SOUTH PARK anyone? It’s Japan with more color and better pronunciation of diphthongs…) in terms of economics, politics, and visions of the future. <\/p>\n

WASH POST: Jesper Koll, an economist who\u2019s lived in Japan for 26 years, says it\u2019s not easy for him to keep faith in a country that\u2019s shrinking, aging, stuck in protracted economic gloom and losing fast ground to China as the region\u2019s dominant power. \u201cI am the last Japan optimist,\u201d Koll said in a recent speech in Tokyo.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the once-common species has been virtually wiped out. It was only two decades ago that Japan\u2019s boosters \u2014 mainly foreign diplomats and authors, economists and entrepreneurs \u2014 touted the tiny nation as a global model for how to attain prosperity and power. But the group has turned gradually into non\u00adbelievers, with several of the last hold\u00adouts losing faith only recently, as Japan has failed to carry out meaningful reforms after the March 2011 triple disaster. The mass turnabout has helped launch an alternative \u2014 and increasingly accepted \u2014 school of thought about Japan: The country is not just in a prolonged slump but also in an inescapable decline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,4,13,31,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-japanese-government","category-media","category-tangents","category-unsustainable-japanese-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}